Starknet has announced that STRK staking will arrive in Q4 2024 on mainnet! With this development, Starknet will be the first L2 to integrate such a mechanism, adding a new utility to the STRK token, which is currently used for:
- ✅ Governance
- ✅ Paying gas fees
- ✅ DeFi activities
- ⌛️Starting in October, staking
All STRK holders—with the exception of the Starknet Foundation, StarkWare, and holders of locked tokens—will be able to participate in the first phase of staking. Additionally, Starknet can accept some Liquid Staking Token (LST) products built by the community as soon as staking is officially launched, allowing us to participate in staking while still being able to use staked STRK in DeFi activities 💃 For more information about staking, check out the dedicated forum post.
Parallel execution and block packing
Starknet v0.13.2 is coming very soon: to testnet on August 5th and mainnet on August 26th. This upgrade will introduce numerous UX and DevX improvements. The most significant enhancement is the rise in Starknet’s TPS capacity to around 250, while transaction finality will speed up to around 2 seconds.
In short: ultra-fast transactions and the ability to handle a massive number of transactions simultaneously ⚡️ If you want to learn more about how this works:
- Parallel execution
- Block packing (previously named applicative recursion)
The fastest prover in town
StarkWare is currently working on its next-gen prover, which is 1000x more efficient than the current Starknet prover, Stone, and over 100x more efficient than any other prover known in the market.
The new prover, Stwo, will be in production in early 2025, making all Starknet-powered chains much faster to prove and more cost-effective!
STARKs over Bitcoin
The big news from July was StarkWare’s announcement of its intention to scale Bitcoin with STARK technology, aiming to make Starknet the first Layer 2 to settle and scale both Ethereum and Bitcoin simultaneously.
And this wasn’t just a marketing announcement; StarkWare has already made significant progress in this quest 🧑🍳
First, StarkWare successfully launched the Stwo Prover on Bitcoin Signet (testnet) and verified the first ZK proof in Bitcoin’s history 🤯 Yes, in just a few months of work, StarkWare (and its partners) have already reached this major milestone. Promising for the future ✨
If you want to know more about how they achieved this, check it out here! Despite this advancement, it is crucial for StarkWare and all ZK on Bitcoin enthusiasts that OP_CAT (BIP) passes. This is why StarkWare recently launched a $1M research fund to explore the benefits and drawbacks of activating OP_CAT on Bitcoin. Additionally, here is StarkWare’s first research paper on combining STARK and OP_CAT on Bitcoin.
If you want to learn more about STARKs over Bitcoin, here’s an AMA held by StarkWare and the Starknet Foundation on this topic.
DeFi Spring 2.0
Following the success of the first phase of DeFi Spring, the Starknet Foundation has announced the continuation of this program, featuring:
- An additional 50M STRK (making a total of 90M STRK still up for grabs).
- An extended end date – December 31, 2024.
To recap, this campaign provides a significant APR boost for liquidity providers. You can learn more about this campaign, including the protocols involved, the yields, and NFTs to mint for participants, on the dedicated DeFi Spring website.
Also, if you want to bridge funds to Starknet to take advantage of this campaign, you can use LayerSwap, which reimburses 85% of bridge fees in STRK tokens!
Just Slink it
The latest significant UX improvement is here, allowing you to interact with Starknet dApps without leaving X! Yes, yes, yes, you can now swap on AVNU, trade NFTs on Flex, play STARKarcade and more directly from X, thanks to Slinks ⚡
No idea what we’re talking about? Just click on the Slink link above and you’ll see. Have fun!
Two OG oracles on Starknet
The two biggest oracles in the crypto ecosystem are live on Starknet mainnet! Developers can now leverage Chainlink‘s and Pyth‘s price feeds to build their Starknet dApps 🕺
For all the details and to learn more about oracles, check out this post.
New Braavos wallet
Following the previous news, while MetaMask is excellent for onboarding new users to Starknet, native Starknet wallets (Argent and Braavos) surpass MetaMask in every aspect: UX, security, and available features.
On that note, here’s the new version of the Braavos wallet, featuring an updated UI and a DeFi dashboard 💅
Argent Card
Argent wallet is currently developing a new exclusive and very useful product: a crypto card!
This means you will soon be able to use your Starknet assets directly for “real-life” needs, like buying a coffee in a real coffee shop! 🤯
Powered by session keys and Starknet’s low gas fees, the Argent Card will be the first fully self-custodial card available on a Validity Rollup. The good news is there won’t be any spread or outrageous fees like most current crypto cards 👇
This roundup comes from the true Starknet OG, To see the original, see over here.
There’s plenty more exciting stuff coming up in August, so stay tuned and follow Starknet on X to keep up!
